Twilight Beta - Auto Survey Ships and WormHoles

Been running a survey ship on auto, it will go for wormholes and then obviously off on a trip with Dr Who

I can see some people would want that, but in early/mid game its an easy way to get your ship stranded out of range on the larger maps (I play on Gigantic/Immense), and therefor argueably on auto they should ignore wormholes or programme in a popup "Want to explore wormhole?".

Never used survey ships on auto before - soooo this maybe an old one. Is this behaviour by design or up for change ??

Love the immense map by the way, nice one - although the wife may hate you for it ......

Regards
Zy

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I agree. Those wormholes can really screw up early surveying in the larger maps. You can avoid them by micromanaging the survey ships... but then... you lose the advantage of "knowing" where all anomalies in your survey ship's range (rather than sight)... and micromanaging is a pain in the first place.

But I'd rather they first look at other things before "fixing" this.

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I usually micromanage the flagship in the first several turns, so I can use it as an additional scout looking for habitable planets. I still steer it towards anomalies, but the path is tailored for scouting ahead of the colony ships through likely star systems. It does mean I lose a little efficiency in scooping up early bonuses that way, compared to automated survey, but not by much. After the main colony rush, I put it on auto if there are any anomalies left. At that point it doesn't matter if it zooms off through a wormhole.

BTW, one benefit of the wormholes is they can give you early contact with a major or minor race, to get a jumpstart on trading (if you trade). I think that might be one of the reasons they're in the game.

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Interesting comment about trade, so far I have seen them jump out of range, so in effect they become suicide missions as they cant move after the jump - I take it you accept the hit that they cant move after a jump as a trade off for the trade contact with other Civs?

It came to light for me because I usually construct my own survey ships in shipbuilder early game (2 or 3) and use them to find anomolies. Been doing it manually in the past, but thought I'd give the automate anomolies function a try.

Regards
Zy

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so far I have seen them jump out of range, so in effect they become suicide missions as they cant move after the jump

Ships out of range can move, they automatically plot a course to the nearest in range space. You won't be able to control them until they get back in range, though.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

so far I have seen them jump out of range, so in effect they become suicide missions as they cant move after the jump

Ships out of range can move, they automatically plot a course to the nearest in range space. You won't be able to control them until they get back in range, though.

Not entirely true. You can retarget ships out of range to anywhere that is in range.

The ship that jumps out of range will automatically take the shortest path back, but if you are willing to micro a bit, you can use it to sweep out huge areas of shroud without losing too much time getting back to known space. This can be useful for making contact with other races or scouting for resources and habitable planets

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I'll give it a wirl, never realised they would still move - the old story get stuck in a rut of doing things one way.

Nothing ventured nothing gained

Regards
Zy

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